


When to give up the fight

by isquinnabel



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-13
Updated: 2012-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-10 02:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isquinnabel/pseuds/isquinnabel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's only so much you can cope with on your own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When to give up the fight

**Author's Note:**

> A fandom-stocking fic, written for ciaimpala. The title comes from [Rain](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFbjE7NFmUI) by Patty Griffin. (Because, come on - Kate would totally listen to Patty Griffin.)

Her house is too big. They're just one tiny woman and one tiny baby, and she hates the loud echo of her footsteps on the hardwood floor.

\---

Her house is too small. It's like living in a dollhouse; she could swear the kitchen didn't feel this closed-in yesterday.

\---

Aaron likes to eat: pureed peas, pureed bananas, her fingers. Thunderstorms soothe him - the first time one passes through, they ride it out on the porch. He falls asleep.

She fumbles her way through motherhood's learning curves, making the same mistakes (and feeling the same panicked incompetence) as every other mom in the history of the world. More than once, the thought _mothers' groups exist, y'know_ floats across her mind, but she never seriously considers joining one. The very idea makes her feel nervous and twitchy. She's barely comfortable leaving the house as it is, what on earth would she do at a Mothers' Group? Or worse, say? She'll never get used to this Oceanic 6 business. Not after a lifetime of trying to fly under the radar.

No. She'd rather (much rather) tough it out alone.

Aaron doesn't seem to mind her ineptitude. He's too busy being fascinated with his toes to judge her for her cluelessness, to give her one of those "you obviously don't know what you're doing" looks that babies are so uncannily good at. That look - it's probably why she'd never really liked babies until now. She's heard people say that it's different when it's yours, but she hadn't really believed them.

It's one of those things that it's nice to be wrong about.

Weeks pass. They manage somehow, and she starts to think that this is something she can actually do. Something she could, one day, become good at. They'll be okay, she and him. They already make a good team.

And then, Aaron starts teething.

The placid, easy baby becomes a screamer. He refuses teething rings, he pushes food angrily away. Occasionally he drops off to sleep from sheer exhaustion after a shrieking fit, and she'll gratefully sink into an uneasy doze. Her waking hours are spent curled up on the couch, crying with him about how much pain he's in and how little she can do about it.

After five relentless days of this, she picks up her cell in a sleep-deprived haze. She makes a tearful phone call, her conversation punctuated with bursts of _won't stop_ and _can't do this_.

"Oh, Kate. Sit tight, we'll be right there."

\---

 _Right there_ is a relative term when you live hours apart.

Several afternoons later, Aaron gnaws anxiously on a pink butterfly fresh from the freezer. It's an old teething ring of Clementine's, the only one that stops his wailing.

"I'm so sorry," she groans, trying to rub the tiredness out of her eyes. "I lost it, I shouldn't have made you come all this way."  
Cassidy hands her a cup of coffee. "For the thousandth time, it's okay. You don't _have_ to do this alone, you know."


End file.
